Neil W. McCabe is a journalist working in Washington.

April 2013

04/30/2013

The junior senator from Kentucky demanded in an April 26 letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry that his department investigate, make public malfeasance, in America's foreign aid programs.

"I am writing to highlight the fact that there are numerous recorded violations of abuse within our foreign aid programs– foreign military aid, specifically – that are already catalogued by your agency, but are unavailable to the American public because the State Department keeps these details classified," wrote Sen. Randall H. Paul (R.-Ky.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a proto-candidate for the Republican's White House nomination in 2014.

The letter also points out that the position of State Department Inspector General has been vacant for five years and that President Barack Obama has not complied with congressiional reporting requirements spelled out in law.

In February, the Kentucky senator, who is also a practicing eye surgeon, wrote a letter to Kerry insisting the IG vancancy be filled, but it remains empty.

Paul has a record of foreign aid skepticism, and made it a part of his Feb. 12 State of the Union response when he said: "Where would we cut spending? Well, we could start with ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting death to America."

Sen. Randall H. Paul (R.-Ky.)

The senator then gave a specific example of Egypt, where protesters attacked the American embassy Sept. 11 and hauled down the national ensign in what was just the beginning of a day that would end with the death of our ambassador to Libya and three others in Benghazi. "The President could begin by stopping the F-16s and Abrams tanks being given to the radical Islamic government of Egypt."

Paul again raised the issue in the letter to Kerry.

"There is still something more insidious than wasted aid – and that is aid sent to countries that burn our flag, storm our embassies, target our diplomats, and chant 'Death to America' in the streets," he wrote. There is simply no compelling moral or political argument to continue to fund countries whose citizens feel the destruction of the United States is in their national interest."

The senator has said on numerous occasions that the American taxpayers cannot properly decide what to do about foreign aid if they are denied the facts.

In the letter, Paul recalls to Kerry his April 18 testimony to the Foreign Relations Committee, when he pledged to seek out waste, fraud and theft in the foreign aid programs.

An example of the president failure to report to Congress is in regards to
Section 3 of the Arms Export Control Act, Paul said.

The act requires the President to report to Congress violations by foreign countries of the conditions of their aid; theft of funds or equipment or the misuse of defense articles would qualify in this regard, he said.

When the transgressions are significant, the reciepient nation should be flagged as ineligible for new military aid, he said.

"To my knowledge, this has never actually occurred, even when substantial violations by various countries are regularly and repeatedly uncovered," he said. "However, the details of all of these violations remain conveniently classified."

04/28/2013

A federal lawsuit filed April 26 demands the court force two
Mississippi counties, with more registered voters than eligible residents, to purge
their voter rolls.

“We hope to get an affirmative ruling from this court, and
then proceed to other counties that have irregularities,” said Susan A.
Carleson, chairman of the Americans Civil Rights Union, which filed the suit in
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi to compel the
voter roll cleanup in Jefferson Davis and Walthall counties.

“The goal is to ensure the integrity of the voting process,
without which we cannot continue as a self-governing nation,” she said.

Like hundreds around the nation, these two counties have
more active registered voters than there are voting age-eligible residents,
according to data from the U.S. Census and state voter registration offices,
she said.

According to the petition Jefferson Davis County has 10,078
active voters but only 9,536 age-eligible citizens.“More than 105 percent of living citizens old
enough to vote were registered to vote in Jefferson Davis County in 2013.”

Walthall County has
14,108 registered voters but only 11,368 age-eligible citizens, which means
that 124 percent of Walthall’s eligible voters are registered, according to the
suit.

The lawsuit, prepared for ACRU by three former Justice
Department attorneys: J. Christian
Adams, former DOJ Voting Section Chief, Christopher Coates and Henry Ross, also
requests that the court orders election officials from the two counties to
provide records and data for public inspection as required by Section 8 of the
National Voter Registration Act, the “Motor Voter Law.”

The two suits are part of the ACRU’s Election Integrity
Defense Project, among whose founders, former Atty. Gen Edwin Meese III, J.
Kenneth Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State, serve on boards for the
organization.

04/27/2013

After being at the side of the legendary conservative leader Howard Phillips from more than three decades, a Washington-native talked about his boss and friend who died April 20 after a long illness.

“In the 1970s, I went to meetings and so forth with the Conservative Caucus—there was even a 10th Congressional District Conservative Caucus, run by Helen Blackwell—I knew the people there, and one day I casually mentioned: ‘Hey, if you’re ever looking for anybody, let me know,’” said Arthur L. “Art” Harman, who was an aide to Phillips and produced his weekly television show “Conservative Crossroads.”

Harman, who is now a Capitol Hill aide to Rep. Stephen E. Stockman (R.-Texas), said he got a call the next morning and began a very nice 30-year career at the cutting edge of conservative politics.

The Conservative Caucus was founded by Phillips in 1974, in the aftermath of his resignation as the acting administrator of the Office Economic Opportunity for President Richard M. Nixon. Phillips took the job running OEO for the purposes of dismantling the agency, which had been in-charge of the “War on Poverty.”

Nixon promised Phillips that as the OEO administrator, he would have White House support. Nixon wavered, Philips quit.

Harman said, The Conservative Caucus continues to operate under the leadership of Phillips’ boyhood friend Peter J. Thomas, based in Warrenton, Va. “Howard used to joke that he and Peter ‘grew up in the same slums together.’”

The conservative stalwart was born in Boston Feb. 3, 1941, and although the political tides picked him up and took him away to Washington, but he never stopped loving his hometown or living the lessons he learned on its streets.

His first street fight was the fight over ratification of President James E. Carter’s treaty with Panama’s President Gen. Omar Torrijos, which transferred the canal and the American territory along the canal to the Panamanians.

04/24/2013

The junior senator from Kentucky, whose filibuster rallied opposition to domestic drone use, April 23 clarified his position after reports that he had flipped.

"My comments last night left the mistaken impression that my position on drones had changed," said Sen. Randall H. Paul (R.-Ky.) about his April 22 interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business channel.

Sen. Randall H. Paul (R.-Ky.)

"Let me be clear: it has not. Armed drones should not be used in normal crime situations," he said.

"They only may only be considered in extraordinary, lethal situations where there is an ongoing, imminent threat. I described that scenario previously during my Senate filibuster."

"Fighting terrorism and capturing terrorists must be done while preserving our constitutional protections," he said.

"This was demonstrated last week in Boston. As we all seek to prevent future tragedies, we must continue to bear this in mind," he said.

Paul controlled the Senate for for more than 13 hours during his March 6 filibuster, which scuttled Democratic plans to proceed to vote on the confirmation of John Brennan as the new CIA director. The senator said then that he was using the parliamentary device to coerce President Barack Obama to state definitively if he would use armed drones against American citizens.

The controversy about his Fox Business comments revolve around his assertion that he always supported the use of drones within the traditional law enforcement context.

"If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him," he said to Fox Business.

"Additionally, surveillance drones should only be used with warrants and specific targets.

A staffer very close to the senator said the statement was a response to "erroneous reports of a change in his position on the use of domestic drones."